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PITY THE FOOL
I struggled back to my feet with as much dignity as I could muster given the circumstances. The water wasn’t cold but it reeked with the accumulated garbage of the village's fishing operation. My audience kept discussing the finer points of my defenestration as I sloshed back to the shore, picking tiny bits of bone out of my hair and rubbing discarded scales off of my cheeks. They mostly ignored me until I glared at them.
“Hey clown! What did you do to set off Frankie?”
I stopped, confused and dripping, but there couldn’t be any mistake. They were talking to me.
“What makes you think I’m a clown?”
“You’re dressed like one aren’t you?” another of the silhouettes jeered while a few more snickered appreciatively.
I looked down at my garish shirt and sighed, but I wasn’t going to get anywhere by snapping at these people. Besides, Frankie made it abundantly clear that I should tread lightly until I have a chance to level up a few dozen times. There was no telling what these people were capable of. I swallowed my anger and shame, forcing a crooked smile onto my face.
“You’ve got me there. To answer your question, I don’t have any money and hoped Frankie might extend some credit.”
The crowd nodded and murmured to themselves. Show over and curiosity sated, they began to disperse, heading back for their huts.
“Hold on!” I shouted after them, “Do any of you need help with anything? I’ll work for room and board.”
“The sun’s set,” one of them called back. “There’s no work to be done until tomorrow.”
“You’re not going to just leave me out here to die are you?”
“Aww, you’ll keep till morning. Ain’t nothing wrong with going hungry now and again.”
“What about monsters? I’m not ready to defend myself yet! Let me in your hut and I’ll work for you tomorrow!”
My voice quavered as I began to beg for my life. It was common knowledge that the most dangerous hunters came out at night. There was no telling what might come out of those jungle covered hills either. If crabs were jumbo-sized here, I did not want to meet this world’s version of a panther. Unexpectedly, a few of the villagers snorted and chuckled at my worry.
“Ain’t no monsters on our island, just keep away from the water and you’ll be fine.”
“What do you mean there aren’t any monsters out here?” I raged.
Sure, I didn’t want to face them now, but how was I supposed to get stronger without roaming monsters to fight?
“I meant what I said. Outset Island is a safe place, has been for nearabouts sixty years. You don’t think we’d live on a monster-infested island do you?” The wizened fisherman chuckled, shaking his head as he disappeared into his hut, leaving me alone in the harbor.
I stomped out of the water and muttered under my breath.
“What the hell is wrong with this starter village? No monsters, indifferent locals, and innkeepers who bully the poor! I’ll never become a hero if I stay here. Whatever it takes, I’m going to be on the next ship leaving this stinking little harbor.”
My stomach growled and brought my attention back to more immediate concerns. The fisherman was right, I would survive a day without food, but I was seriously dehydrated and would need to take care of that sooner rather than later.
If people lived here, then there had to be some kind of spring nearby. Searching the treeline behind the village revealed a path leading into the hills. It was easy enough to spot the hole in the undergrowth in the open but following it under the broad, starlight-blocking fronds was another matter entirely. I had to use my bare feet to feel my way along the packed dirt path more than I followed it with my eyes.
Despite the villagers’ insistence that there weren’t any monsters, I couldn’t help jumping at every sound and staring into every shadow, willing my eyes to pierce the darkness. Eventually, I heard trickling water. That sound led me right to the spring, welling up in a clay-walled pool and spilling over in little rivulets which didn’t reach far before disappearing into the damp earth.
I plunged my entire head into the pool and shook it. Sand and salt and fishy brine washed away as I gulped the cool fresh water until my stomach couldn’t hold any more. Then I sat down with my back to the pool, refreshed and panting. The dripping water felt marvelous on my sunburns and I didn’t even notice when my fatigue finally overcame my anxiety. It felt like I had just closed my eyes for a moment when cold water sloshed over my head, waking me with a start.
“Rotting beggar” sneered the same teen from the night before as he dipped a second bucket into the pool, splashing more water over the edge and down on me. He stomped down the path back to the beach, muttering loud enough for me to hear.
“Comes to my village and thinks we’ll just give him anything he asks for? Figures I’d find him sleeping the day away in the shade. As if sailors aren’t bad enough, why did the gods have to curse us with a layabout clown?”
I didn’t bother defending myself. My stomach was twisting itself in knots. My legs and back were unbearably stiff and my skin felt like it was going to split open every time I moved. A cloud of flies swarmed around me, drawn by the fishy smell I picked up in the harbor. I was starting to have second thoughts about this new world.
After a few minutes of self-indulgent moaning I forced myself upright. The sooner I got moving, the sooner I could get some food. I started by drinking as much water as I could manage and after some initial cramping, the knots in my stomach eased somewhat. Too bad I don’t have a water bottle. It’s going to be a pain to come back here every time I get thirsty…
The thought made me stop and wonder. Didn’t I have something that would work just as well? I lowered a hand into the pool and focused. The water suddenly rushed toward my hand as everything I touched disappeared into my dimensional vault. I absorbed the water more quickly than expected and staggered under the mounting weight before I managed to reverse the flow, sending water back out of my hand until the weight was easier to manage.
It was odd seeing the water disappear as if down a drain and then suddenly come surging back. Releasing the water from my hand must have displaced what was already there, resulting in a wave that sent gallons of water spilling over the edge of the pool.
After briefly scrubbing my face, I started back down the path. With pre-dawn light filtering through the canopy it was much easier to follow and it only took a few minutes before I found myself back at the village. Those minutes were enough for me to think through my situation again. Getting off the island was still a priority, but it was slipping from the number one spot. I needed some food before I could worry about anything else.
By the time I arrived at the harbor, it was already bustling with activity. People rushed back and forth in coordinated chaos as they prepared their boats for another long day of fishing. That teen glared at me from where he was emptying his buckets into a barrel. I hobbled over to one of the groups on my stiff legs and cleared my throat.
“What do you want now?” asked one man with a long oar slung over his leathery shoulder.
“I want to help. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“If you want to help then get out of the rotting way,” said another as he stepped around me and stooped to pack a neatly folded net between a pair of similar bundles.
“Come on, you’ve got to have some odd job you’d rather pass on to someone else.”
“I’ve been doing this for thirty years, boy,” grunted the first man as he lowered his oar into a horse-shoe shaped fulcrum and tied it in place. “We can get along just fine without you.”
“Let’s give the lad a chance Cliff,” said the oldest fisherman who was pressing his palms into the small of his back after filling a small, wide chest with saltwater
“Another pair of hands won’t hurt. Hey kid, what skills do you have?”
I wasn’t prepared for an interview and fell back onto a generic response.
“Uh, I’m a quick learner with strong attention to detail and I’m always willing to go the extra mile. You won’t regret picking me.”
“That’s all fine, but what skills do you have? Can you row? Cast a net? Descale and gut a fish? What can you do?”
“Well, I’ve got a lot of potential,” I hedged.
The fisherman waved me away like an annoying fly.
“If you can’t do anything, I can’t use you. It’s your own rotting fault if you couldn’t be bothered to learn a useful skill or two by this point in your life.”
No one else would consider taking me on their boat after that and I wasn’t going to win any popularity contests by continuing to pester them. It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. I should have had a half dozen fetch or delivery quests by this point. What was I supposed to do now? I wasn’t about to try foraging in the jungle. I didn’t even know how to spot poisonous plants on earth so there was no way I was going to take my chances in another dimension. There was nothing for it. I would have to try something risky.
Frankie leaned against the corner of his warehouse, surveying his domain while slowly chewing on a toothpick. He watched dispassionately as I hobbled closer.
“I thought I told you to clear out,” he grumbled.
“Yes, you were very clear on that point,” I said with a self-conscious smile. “I wanted to apologize for my behavior last night. I shouldn’t have expected a free meal.”
Frankie snorted but didn’t make any threatening moves so I continued.
“That being said, I’m still hungry…” The toothpick went unsettlingly still and I took a step back, hurrying to finish explaining myself.
“You mentioned I should bring you some ingredients if I want to eat. That sounds like a fair deal to me. If you could tell me what ingredients you need and where to find them, I’d be happy to bring them to you for some food.”
I clamped my mouth shut before I could start rambling. A tense silence stretched between us but when my stomach complained loudly, Franky sighed.
“Tell you what. Most of the fishermen only bring in fish. No big surprise there but it’s making the stew a little one-note. I’ll let you have a bowl each day you manage to bring me at least 10 clams.”
“Great! Where can I find them?”
“They’re easiest to gather along the water-line. They hide under the sand, look for the bubbles and start digging.”
Repeatable Quest: Food for Frankie
Requirements: Bring Frankie 10 clams
Rewards: 1 serving of stew
The new prompt startled me but the smile that stole over my face was genuine. Frankie didn’t seem to notice the shiny plaque floating in midair. I guess the messages were invisible to everyone but me. The description did say it was a personal interface after all.
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“Thanks Frankie, I won’t let you down!”
“Hrmph,” He grunted, looking out over the horizon.
I left as quickly as my sore muscles could manage.
“Oh, and watch out for the crabs, they’ll take your toes off if you’re not paying attention!” he called after me.
I walked east, cutting through the jungle to get to the other side of the breakwater. If I was going to spend all day playing in shallow water, I might as well do it where the water wasn’t polluted. It also gave my muscles a chance to loosen up a bit. Twenty minutes later I got to the spot where I woke up the day before.
It didn’t take long to spot the bubbles Frankie mentioned. Each time a wave receded, tiny bubbles rose up from somewhere underneath the sand until it could finish drying out, usually just in time for the next wave. With the easy part over, it was time to move on to phase two of my master plan.
I took a wide stance, bent over, and started digging doggy-style, flinging fistfulls of sand between my legs. The fine grains felt like fire in my sunburned fingers but the pain in my stomach drove me onward.
Waves continued to wash over my dig-site, refilling the hole with sand but also churning it up and making it easier to scoop handfuls of muck out of the rapidly widening hole. It wasn’t until I was elbow deep in the shoreline that I felt something sharp and ridged.
I redoubled my efforts and pressed my hand deeper into the slurry but each time I touched it, it retreated a little more until I was up to my shoulder in the sand, incoming waves washing over my face. That was when a crab scuttled out of the surf like some kind of nightmare. The things were unsettling enough when I was standing at a distance, but putting them on face-level was just too much.
I struggled to pull my arm out of the sand but it was stuck and pressing down with my free hand only caused it to sink too. I couldn’t get any leverage from this position and the vacuum-seal made by the wet sand was too strong. The crab scuttled closer and raised its claws, snapping them excitedly.
“Kaka-Cha?” it seemed to ask, scuttling right at my face.
“Fuckin’ nope!”
I wasn’t about to get merked by some generic starter-zone mob because I got caught in home-made quicksand! That was just one insult too far. I reached out and gathered up all the water around me into my dimensional vault. The crab paused as an entire wave disappeared in an instant. I wheezed as the crushing weight forced all the air out of my lungs, then I summoned the water, from the fingertips of my trapped hand. I shot free of the ground like a champagne cork and for the second time in as many days, I was sent pinwheeling through the air.
Luckily, I didn’t land in water this time. It took me a little while to stagger back to my feet but the crab didn’t have any luck following me onto the dry sand while I was dazed.
“You better watch out! One of these days I’m going to have a crab hammer and some butter! Then you’ll be sorry!” I shouted at it. It raised its claws in challenge but didn’t follow me onto the dry sand. Eventually it retreated back into the waves.
I sat down hard and breathed heavily. My previously trapped fingers and wrist throbbed like stubbed toes. I clenched my hand a few times despite the pain to convince myself that nothing was broken.
“Freaking sea spiders.” I shuddered. “Don’t think about it, just don’t think about it. Character.”
Name: Patrick
Titles: Trans-Dimensional Being
Feats: 0/1
Level: 1
Essence: 0/100
Strength: 5.4 / 6
Endurance: 3.6 / 4
Dexterity: 12
Intelligence: 14
Attunement: 2
Charisma: 6
Luck: 14
HP: 41/54
SP: 7/36
MP: 140
Hungry I: 10% reduced STRENGTH and ENDURANCE
Looks like I’m officially hungry. I took more of a beating than expected too. Well, better than plastic surgery a-la crab. Too bad I don’t know any spells, my 14 Intelligence would probably make crab cakes out of that bastard.
I sat up at that thought. That’s not totally true though is it? I’ve only been thinking of my dimensional vault as an inventory, but it’s not. It’s a soul-bound dimensional spell that affects gravity and even time! There have to be other ways to use it.
I knelt down and pressed my right palm against the sand. It began sinking into the beach as I siphoned everything it touched into my vault. I started feeling heavier, but before it got oppressive I dumped the sand out of my left hand, creating a hole two feet deep in about five seconds.
After discovering how to use my inventory like a magical excavator it was child's play to collect shellfish. All I had to do was walk down the shore until I spotted some bubbles and siphon sand through my dimensional vault until the ridged clamshells were uncovered. They would always try to dig to safety with surprising speed but when I could make sand disappear by touching it, they didn’t stand a chance. Oddly enough, no matter how hard I concentrated, I couldn’t put any of the shellfish into the vault.
Less than an hour after I set out, my pockets were bulging with clams. The quest only called for ten but I got a little carried away playing with my new ability. A few more crabs ventured out of the waves to investigate what I was doing and whether or not I was edible but it was easy enough to keep away from them when I wasn’t half-buried.
As fun as playing in the sand was, it was time to get some breakfast! I couldn’t keep myself from jogging back to the harbor. I slipped a few times on the waxy leaves strewn over the jungle-floor but it didn’t matter. I emerged from the jungle covered in dirt, sweat, and sand, but I was victorious! I had completed my first quest! I got off to a rough start but nothing was going to stop me from living the life of adventure I had always dreamed of.
The village’s three fishing skiffs drifted around the harbor, but they were joined by a larger vessel. Maybe I’d get to leave sooner than I had hoped. The dinghy tied to the dock and the noise from Frankie’s tavern seemed to indicate that the sailors had come ashore. My stomach gurgled in excited anticipation as I made for the little eatery. It might be this world’s equivalent of a highway rest-stop but that couldn’t have mattered less at the moment. I burst into the room, banging the door against the inside wall.
“Hey Frankie!” I shouted. “I got something for ya!”
A half dozen rough looking sailors broke off their conversations and put down their bowls to give me a once over. I was still riding the high of sweet sweet quest completion and didn’t care.
Let them watch. They can tell their grandkids that they were there when Patrick the Great completed his first quest ever.
I sauntered up to the bar with all the swagger of John Wayne. Frankie glared down at me with crossed arms, a stern warning writ large across his face. I reached into my clinking pockets and began piling handfuls of shellfish on the counter until there was a mound as big as my head. I waggled my eyebrows at Frankie.
“Pretty impressive, huh?”
Some of the patrons snorted at my underwhelming accomplishment, others guffawed and one laughed outright. Frankie just took one of the clams and inspected it. He nodded to himself and scooped all the shellfish behind the bar where I heard them plunk into a bucket of water.
“It’ll do,” he grunted before turning to pull a wooden bowl down from the shelf behind him. He filled it to the brim and slid it in front of me.
Repeatable Quest Complete: Food for Frankie
Rewards: 1 serving of Frankie’s Famous Fish Stew
Bonus Rewards: +3 Reputation points with Frankie (Current total: 63 -Stranger)
I dismissed the prompt as quickly as I could to focus on the thick reddish stew in front of me. Drool began running like a faucet and I gulped it down before bringing the bowl to my lips. Heaven, it was heaven. They say hunger is the best seasoning and they’re right, whoever they are.
Before I knew it, the bowl was empty and I pushed back from the bar with a satisfied sigh. Another prompt flared in and out of existence and I became even more impressed by Frankie’s cooking. Was this what even mundane skills were capable of?
You have consumed: Frankie’s Famous Fish Stew
Primary Effect: You are fully sated
Secondary Effect: +1 Endurance for 6 hours
“I can honestly say that’s the best soup I’ve ever had,” I admitted to Frankie. He unexpectedly brightened and another notification flashed by, letting me know that I’d earned another reputation point.
“Shows you’ve got good taste in food if nothing else,” he rumbled. “This here’s the same pot of soup my pa started when this island was first settled.” I went a little green around the gills but Frankie didn’t seem to notice. He leaned in and adopted a conspiratorial tone even though his voice was still loud enough to fill the small tavern.
“It’s a secret family recipe that gets better the longer you cook it. You could call it my life’s work.” he mused proudly.
“That’s incre-edible,” I said around a burp. “Is that why I got a stat boost?”
Frankie looked at me like I had grown an extra head.
“Stat boost? What’s that?”
How could he not know the effects of his own cooking?
“You know, my Endurance improved a little bit for the next six hours.”
“Oh that?” Frankie said. “Nothin’ special about that, just an ability I picked up when I was a younger man.” He waved a hand as if his revelation was entirely inconsequential but I jumped on it eagerly.
“What are abilities?”
I got that look again.
“You don’t know what abilities are?”
“You don’t know what stats are,” I countered. He shrugged.
“Fair enough. You can get abilities at the adventurer’s guild, they-”
“Hold the phone! There’s an adventurers guild here?”
The eavesdropping sailors burst into laughter.
“Jolly-boy here thinks Outset Island has an adventurer’s guild? What a maroon! Like the adventurers would want anything from a backwater like this!”
“And that’s just how we like it!” Frankie bellowed, cutting off the laughter. “Nobody bothers us and we don’t bother nobody else. It’s better than trying to scrape by on the mainland.”
A chorus of grumbling agreement sounded through the tavern and Frankie rounded on me, flicking droplets of stew across the counter as he pointed with a wooden spoon.
“Don’t you go chasing after adventurers either, they’re a dangerous lot. Most of ‘em would sell their own mothers to get what they want.”
“What do you know about it?” I asked hotly, but before I could follow it up with an insult I’d probably regret, Frankie cut in.
“More than you judging by your questions.”
He was right, but that didn’t matter. I was tired of being looked down on by a bunch of primitive hicks. It’s time they knew just who they were dealing with.
“I might not know much now,” I said, eyes and voice starting low but lifting as I continued “and I’m just a weakling today, but someday, I’m going to be the greatest hero this world has ever seen!”
I ended the proclamation on my feet, fists clenched and raised by the unexpected passion behind my conviction. A gale of laughter nearly knocked me over as the sailors leaned on each other and clutched their stomachs. I gritted my teeth as an unwelcome notification faded into view.
Social Skill Gained: [Jester: Lv-1]
+2% effect of performances
+1% chance to earn tips
Of all the skills I wanted to learn, I had to pick up clowning by accident. I angrily dismissed the notification and stalked out of the tavern. I paced and fumed and kicked at the sand, cooling off enough to talk with the sailors again when they filed back to their dinghy.
“Hey! It’s the hero!” one of them called mockingly.
“You hunt any more clams, hero?”
“Haha, very funny,” I deadpanned. “I need passage off this shitty little island. What do I need to do to get on board?”
“You’re going to need a lot more than a pocket full of shellfish,” one of the sailors crowed.
“I’ll serve as a sailor, or go into debt. I just need to get to an adventurer’s guild.”
“Oh it’s that easy is it? Just get to the guild and gold will rain from the sky? As far as sailing goes, if you know a sheet from a halyard I’ll eat my boots!”
The sailors pushed past me towards their boat carrying a few sealed crates and rolling a sloshing water barrel down the half-buried planks in the sand. One of them stopped however.
“If you’re serious about becoming an adventurer, you’ll need to get to Navarone. The standard rate for passage that far is three silvers, but if you ask me, you’re better off staying here. It’s safe enough and Frankie makes a mean stew.”
He patted me on the shoulder in a friendly sort of way before jogging to catch up with the rest of his crew.
“Then why are you leaving?” I grumbled under my breath.